The Wonders of the Invisible World, Corollary 4 – Conjecture 1
Corollary. IV.
How wellcome should a Death in the Lord, be unto them, that belong not unto the Divel, but unto the Lord! While We are sojourning in this world, we are in what may upon too many accounts be called The Divels Country: we are where the Divel may Come down upon us in Great Wrath continually. The day when God shall take us out of this world, will be, The Day when the Lord will deliver us from the Hand of all our enemies, and from the Hand of Satan: In such a day, why should not our Song be that of the Psalmist, Blessed be my Rock, and let the God of my Salvation be Exalted! While we are here, we are in the Valley of the shadow of Death; and what is it that makes it so! Ti's because the Wild Beasts of Hell are lurking on every side of us, & every minute ready to Salley forth upon us. But our Death will fetch us out of that Valley, and carry us where we shall be, For ever with the Lord. We are now under the daily Buffetings of the Divel, and he does molest us with such Fiery Darts, as cause us even to cry out, I am weary of my Life. Yea, but are we as Willing to Dy, as, Weary of Life? Our Death will then soon set us where we cannot be Reach'd by the, Fist of Wickednoss: and where the, Perfect cannot be shotten at. It is said, in Rev. 14. 13. Blessed are the Dead, which Dy in the Lord, They Rest from their Labours. But we may say, Blessed are the Dead in the Lord, inasmuch they Rest from the Devils! Our Dying will be but our Taking Wing: When, attended with a Convoy of Winged Angels, we shall be convey'd into that Heaven, from whence the Devil having been thrown, he shall never more come thither after us. What if God should now say to us, as to Moses, Go up and Dy! As long as we Go up, when we Dy, Let us receive the Message with a Joyful Soul; we shall soon be there, where the Devil can't Come Down upon us. If the, God of our Life, should now send that Order to us, which he gave to Hezekiah, Set thy House in Order, for thou shalt Dy, and not Live; We need not be cast into such deadly Agonies thereupon, as Hezekiah was: We are but going to that House, the Golden Doors whereof, cannot be Entred by the Devil that here did use to Persecute us. Methinks, I see the Departed Spirit of a Believer, Triumphantly carried thro' the Devils Territories, in such a Stately and Fiery, Chariot, as the Spiritualizing Body of Elias had; methinks, I see the Devil, with whole Flocks of Harpies, grinning at this Child of God, but unable to fasten any of their Griping Talons upon him: And then, upon the utmost Edge of our Atmosphaere, methinks I over-hear the Holy Soul, with a most Heavenly Gallantry deriding the Defeated Fiend, and saying, Ah! Satan! Return to thy Dungeons again; I am going where thou canst not come for ever! O 'tis a Brave Thing so to Dy! And especially so to Dy, in Our Time. For, tho' when we call to mind, That the Devils Time is now but short, it may almost make us wish to Live unto the End of it; and to say with the Psalmist, Because the Lord will shortly appear in His Glory, to Build up Zion. O my God, Take me not away in the midst of my Dayes! Yet when we bear in mind, That the Devils Wrath is now most Great, it would make one willing to be, Out of the Way. Inasmuch as now is the Time for the doing of those things in the prospect whereof Balaam long ago cry'd out, Who shall live when such Things are done! We should not be inordinately loth to Dy at such a Time. In a word, The Times are so Bad, that we may well count it, as Good a Time to Dy in, as ever we saw.
Corollary. V.
Good News for the Israel of God, and particularly for His New-English Israel! If the Devils Time were above a Thousand Years ago, pronounced, Short, What may we suppose it now in Our Time? Surely We are not a Thousand Years distant from those Happy Thousand Years of rest and peace, and [which is better] Holiness, reserved for the people of God in the latter days; and if we are not a Thousand Years, yet short of that Golden Age, there is cause to think, that we are not an Hundred. That the blessed Thousand Years are not yet begun, is abundantly clear from this, We do not see the Devil bound; No, the Devil was never more let Loose than in our Days; and it is very much that any should imagine otherwise: But the same thing that proves the Thousand Years of Prosperity for the Church of God, UNDER THE WHOLE HEAVEN, to be not yet Begun, do's also prove, that it is not very Far Off; and that is the prodigious Wrath with which the Devil do's in our Days Prosecute, yea, Desolate the World. Let us cast our Eyes almost where we will, and we shall see the Devils Domineering at such a rate as may justly fill us with astonishment; it is Quaestionable whether Iniquity ever were so Rampant, or whether Calamity were ever so Pungent, as in this Lamentable Time; We may truly say, Tis the Hour and the Power of Darkness. But, tho' the Wrath be so Great, the Time is but Short: when we are perplexed with the Wrath of the Devil, the Word of our God at the same time unto us, is that, in Rom. 16. 20. The God of Peace shall bruise Satan under your feet SHORTLY. SHORTLY, didst thou say, Dearest Lord! O! Gladsome word! Amen, Even so, Come, Lord! Lord Iesus, Come Quic… ly! We shall never be rid of this Troublesome Devil, till, Thou do come to Chain him up!
But because the people of God, would willingly be told Whereabouts we are with reference to the Wrath and the Time, of the Devil, you shall give me leave humbly to set before you a few, Conjectures.
The first Conjecture
The Devils Eldest Son seems to be towards the End of his last Half-time; and if it be so, the Devils Whole-time, cannot but be very near it's End. It is a very scandalous thing that any Protestant, should be at a loss where to find, The Anti-Christ. But, we have sufficient Assurance, that the Duration of Antichrist, is to be but for a Time, and for Times, and for Half a time; that is for Twelve-hundred and Sixty Years. And indeed, those Twelve Hundred and Sixty years, were the very Spott of Time left for the Devil, and meant when 'tis here said, He has but a short time. Now, I should have an Easy Time of it, if I were never put upon an Harder Task, than to produce what might render it extreamly probable, That Antichrist entred his last Half-time, or the Last Hundred and Fourscore years of his Reign, at or soon after the Celebrated Reformation which began at the year 1517 in the former Century. Indeed, it is very agreeable to see how Antichrist then Lost Half of his Empire; and how that Half which then became Reformed, have been upon many accounts little more than Half-Reformed. But by this Computaion, we must needs bee within a very few years of such a Mortification to befall the See of Rome, as that Antichrist who ha's lately been planting (what proves no more lasting than) a Tabernacle in the Glorious Holy Mountain between the Seas, must quickly, Come to his End and none shall help him. So then, within a very little while, we shall see the Devil stript of the Grand, yea, the Last, Vehicle, wherein he will be capable to abuse our World. The Fires, with which, That Beast, is to be consumed, will so singe the Wings of the Devil too, that he shall no more set the Affairs of this world on Fire. Yea, they shall both go into the same Fire, to be tormented for ever and ever.